Didnt even have my GA-P67A-UD3P installed for 3 days before all this went down. I might just deal with it and drop a DVD drive so I can stick with the 2 6gb ports. Im not in the mood to do another reformat in April, not to mention be 2 weeks without board...and a PC.Reply

What you offered is a workaround solution. Anyway, it should OK with most of the folks out there.

To me, still that chipset has the bug to deal with in the long run. Say, what happens when I add couple of things like this:

SSD 6Gb/s - 128 GB - 1HDD 6Gb/s - 2 TB - 1HDD 3Gb/s - - 2 TB - 2

Plus there will be, DVD Combo, PSU etc. I wish to add a few more. Then what?

Plus, we'll wasting one pcie slot filling up that controller card. Isn't it? It's always better to get the board replaced to get peace of mind (bugs always plants doubts in the minds of the many people so people tend to loose their confidence or try to be ovr cautious with everything. After all, we are talking about a running MOBO, isn't it?). Reply

I'm with you on that. I HATE changing out components in a build. PSU is probably the most common annoying replacement, but mobo is IMO the worst. Had a Gigabyte mobo that crapped out after 3 months of use and it stunk having to ruin all of my cable management, remove all the components, etc. to replace. I'd do as you do (unless they sweeten the deal with the replacement by offering something worth the trouble).Reply

Know how ya feel dude, just getting a new refurb BoneTrail 2 mobo back from Intel RMAed to NAMO. You can probably complete the acronym North American Motherboard Operations in Kentucky. Gonna take me hours to get all the cabling back to normal. At least they honored the three year warranty, two and a half years into it. With this new Intel chipset mess they are gonna be damn busy! ;)Reply

2 weeks?You should try 2 months as that how long I've waited for my CPU since it wasn't out on the market yet, and my old system died so I didn't want to spend my money on old stuffs.The 2 months was the most horrible experience ever! After the lesson, I went and bough myself a notebook so if my desktop is waiting for parts, at leas I still have a machine to use. :)Reply

At least someone has decided what they're going to do about this whole debacle. I'm wondering how much of a mess it's going to be though with everyone having to go through the retailers to get this sorted out. For example, I bought mine (albeit an ASUS board) online through a merchant on eBay who is a subsidiary of another larger retailer. It hurts my head just having to think about what sort of hoops I'll have to jump through if ASUS decides to go down this path. Here's hoping they'll just deal with it on their own instead of using the middle man. Reply

"Sending all returns/exchanges through the distributor/retailer channels is an interesting approach. I would rather Gigabyte handle the whole thing (e.g. send us an eligible board, we’ll send you a new one) but I can understand if getting the distributors/retailers to help makes things easier."I much prefer the approach they have taken to this one. If it was the other way around (you enter your serial number in, they send you a new board with a prepaid shipping label back for your old board) then that would be the best option. Having to mail your board in and wait for weeks would suck, though.Reply

Agreed.Manufacturer's distribution channels aren't set up to handle traffic from thousands of individual users, they're set up to bulk ship to distributors who are, likewise, set up to handle smaller bulk shipments to retailers.

The retailers are the folks whose distribution setup is geared toward individual purchasers.If the manufacturers attempted to handle the RMA's directly, you wouldn't get your replacement board for about a year.Reply

Maybe, even I hope the same but feature wise, in these P67 series, Asus has slight advantage over Gigabyte. But that doesn't mean Gigabyte has lost it, those boards rock even with minor drawbacks. Reply

You know Wolf my gf has some real karma going on. I have traced the source point back to two massive orbs attached to her narrow chest wall, (scratching head), for the life of me, I can't figure it out! Reply

This could bode very well from AMD. Personally, because of this issue I will not be getting a SB platform just yet. I will be waiting until April. If AMD could get Bulldozer out in April and deliver competitive performance they could really ruin Intel's party.

A local forum I frequent has people who were contemplating getting Sandy Bridge holding their cards now. Come on AMD, the ball's in your court now!Reply

I'd love to see Bulldozer be successful - but the sad fact is that Intel have caught them by surprise with Quick Sync, which will be a killer feature with a bit more software support, and something for which AMD will have no answer for at least a year.I'm hoping AMD will be sustained by a revitalised Netbook market dominated by Brazos, and that they can get their own hardware encoding s**t together!Reply

reading between the lines, I think that is exactly what Gigabyte are suggesting - you get your refund when the new boards are available, rather than exchange your board, and then you can choose something better, hopefully for less money, hopefully Z68 That compensates you somewhat for the trouble you have to go to replacing the mobo yourself. I don't think it should put you in any kind of moral dilemma! In years to come, everone will be telling their grand-kids about the great Intel recall....Reply

It's a wonder we don't see more of these bugs given the high performance and complexity of modern chipsets and new CPU architecture.Intel seem to have acted quickly and this looks like a solid recall with them stepping up to bat to cover it.That's a decent response and deserves some respect.Reply

I agree completely. Its very impressive how these billion transistor chips built on such a fragile process can survive and thrive. Even when run out of spec via overclocking or shoddy power regulation, most microprocessors outlive their warranty period by quite a bit when even 1 failed transistor could ruin the entire system.Reply

Look my friend, bugs are everywhere in this world. Look at inside your body or bugs that trigger your cells to go haywire. So, silicon bugs are nothing much to crib about and that too they are human made! You are asking too much with Intel. What about a person who I know has spend hundred of thousands of dollars on a Ferrari 458 Italia, only to watch his super car catching some quick fire? Even that mighty Ferrari fell for a buggy blue in the wheel assembly? Imagine, glue taking out an entire Ferrari? Intel's problems are of Peanut size :)Reply

Since the retailer/distributor will handle the return/exchange, will it be up to them to determine how the exchange takes place? Sending in a motherboard and waiting for the replacement is ridiculous and unacceptable. It's the motherboard, not an optical drive or keyboard.Reply

1) The replacement should be done direct by the motherboard manufacturer, the same as if the motherboard was defective(which it is) and still under warranty. The original vendor may be out of business, or otherwise not able to handle an exchange.

2) The replacement should have a credit card advance shipment option. The motherboard manufacturer would take your credit card info for the retail price of the motherboard, and ship out a replacement, including a prepaid shipping label. The charge would be cancelled when the returned motherboard is recieved. That way the end user is without a computer only for as long as it takes to swap cards.

3) Intel needs to do something for the end users also. Perhaps a discount coupon for an Intel product like a SSD.Reply

I agree Intel is doing a commendable job biting the bullet on this while it was still relatively manageable, I think that if they suffer any brand hit at all from this it will be very negligible.

Compare this to Nvidia and the 680/780 chipsets that flat out died ALL THE TIME. Or perhaps their laptop chipsets and GPU's that died due to heat cycling. Speaking of heat cycle death, MS never did stop production or recall on the 360 and that is a much bigger issue.

The above poster makes an interesting point though, if AMD is able to get Bulldozer launched in H1 like planned, they will be timed very close to the relaunch of SB. Could be interesting.Reply

Anand, Of course the manufacturer will accept a board that isnt working. They have only just been released and most manfacturers offer a 2-3 years warranty whatever the cause of the fault. Whats the use of a warranty program if they dont accept boards that dont work?Reply

That you must be very very unlucky to have your board crapped out in the first three months of operation. Keep important drives on the first two ports, and the optical drives on SATA ports, and you should be good to go for more than a couple of months, enough to last you until you can replace the board with something elseReply

I have 7 drives connected to my onboard headers, and 2 more on a PCIe controller. I don't have a new Cougar Point based board though, but I'm just saying, there is enough reason for people to be worried about the boards.Reply

And where are all doom-mongers saying that X58 is dead. X58/S1366 owners laughing all the way to the bank right now. I, particularly, can't get my head around why someone need to "upgrade" from LGA1156 to 1155 - of course beside some slightly higher random numbers appearing when benchmarks are over. Waste of time and money. If you bought X58 in 2008 you get nice 4 year run before X68 premiere, moving from LGA1156 to 1155 in space of 12-24 months is completely bonkers - unless of course you sleep on ca$h and couldn't care less about money, if so go right ahead, all such "improvements" are targeted at such as you.Reply

"I, particularly, can't get my head around why someone need to "upgrade" from LGA1156 to 1155 ..."

I entirely agree. Anyone with a P55 that's running 4GHz+ should be more thanhappy with their system's peformance for a good long time.

Plus, is it just me or does SB make overclocking kinda boring? I wonder whetherthis new MO will go down that well with the overclocking crowd. Afterall, where'sthe technical challenge? And as someone else mentioned recently, though SBCPUs are supposedly unlocked, they still have a max multiplier, so extreme oc'ingis out of the question.

So yes, this is an enormous opportunity for AMD, assuming of course they don'tadopt a similar approach to how their future chips operate.

It's ironic, the ever increasing level of integration is slowly making PCs so black-box that the hobbyist crowd who like to mess around with the hardware are beinggradually squeezed out with respect to what they can really do. Pity.

@I, particularly, can't get my head around why someone need to "upgrade" from LGA1156 to 1155 ..."

Yep, not point. But people who wanna build/buy then what? I don't see P55s perform that bad even after post Sandy Bridge days. I would suggest, if one has smart mind, apply it by comparing with the falling prices under P55 instead of going with P67s. But, it need not to be true for all. Just an idea to prove that P55 is not exactly a dead end as some reviewers tried very hard to sell the Sandy Bridge. Today, I could build a 870 based P55 and live it with it for the next 7-10 years for sure!!!Reply

Um Gee, let's see. I'm running my I7-2600 at 4.4ghz with the stock Intel cooler using the brain-dead little OC program Asus bundles with the board on 'Fast' rather than 'Extreme' setting.

So which would I rather have? An LGA1366 chip running at 4.4ghz needing ridiculous bios timing and 3x120 rad water cooling, or a dumb lil 1155 chip running that same speed with a STOCK INTEL COOLER whose CPU + mobo that cost about the same as the motherboard for 1366 system alone. Or maybe I'll do a little bios tweaking and get the thing running at 5.2Ghz ON AIR. Duh!

So I throw all my hard drives on the 6GB sata ports, throw the dvd b urner on a 3GB sata port and if the 3GB ports quit a years down the road, no sweat. Go out and spend a couple hundred on a new Z68 board.

Dude, X58 is still breathing well! Intel will be offering a new LGA-1366 6-core 3.46GHz to 3.6GHz with turbo CPU brand new this month, the i7 990X Extreme! You are one of the lucky ones that bought into a platform early and carried it thru it's development, has to be the overall most cost effective methodology! I plan to do the same with Sandy-E adding an Ivy Bridge CPU two years into the run and maybe a Haskins chip if the socket remains the same. ;) Reply

X58 is more or less obsolete when we compare with Price/Performance or Power factors. See, more people are becoming Energy conscious and are trying to be more responsible. In the US I've seen most of the entry level gamers wants to start with a X58 board, such ignorance is leading to more power consumption and you know what else.Again, Z68, is not at all meant for everyone. Maybe this segment would be between 10-15% in the first year so I don't see any reason to waste $ on it this year. LGA1155 is a smart choice, when we take the above mentioned factors. Note that they also come upto 4-way config (SLI or CFX) so it should be more than OK for 99% folks out there. Reply

They're not "fixing" motherboards. They're recalling the boards and replacing them.All of the boards currently on the shelves are being pulled.

Worst-case scenario, you check the revision level of the board.If it's a rev 1.0 board, you report the seller for selling you a board for which both the manufacturer and the chip-maker have issued a mandated recall.Reply

Has Intel mentioned anything about OS activation? If you are forced to change the motherboard, then you are also going to have a hard time explaining to Microsoft why they should reactivate your OEM copy of windows in a new motherboard after it had already been activated in the buggy hardware.

Even if it just means a call to Microsoft, they play with you phone ping pong and it is going to be about a 1 hour phone call just to get this problem sorted.Reply

Hopefully Intel and Microsoft's relationship is strong enough to be prepared for this.Normal phone activation has always been pretty smooth for me...well in the last couple of years at least.Good point though, something for the end user to keep in mind.Reply

If it turns out to be an April/May thing it would be nice for the end user if they just kill P67 and replace it with Z68. Though I understand there might not be enough lead time for motherboard manufacturers to reconfigure their board designs from P67 to Z68.Reply

I actually have a hard time believing this (5% in 3 years) is the estimated failing rate. What is the RROD rate after which Microsoft is trying to hide? 33% in a year?

If you think, among the 6 million boards they are getting back, if only 5% of them will fail in the foreseeable warranty period , that is 0.3 million boards only. Spending a billion on this is like spending $3000 to replace a single defective board.

No, I would assume the only reason to have this treatment is that it would be apparent for at least half of the boards. maybe 5% is the number that goes to a completely halt.Reply

Remember that the percentage of *projected* failure is a statistical calculation.That figure is not based on real-world incidents.

Spending a billion dollars on this is chump-change compared to what could happen if Intel didn't take these steps to nip the problem in the bud.

The alternative is what happened regarding NVIDIA video chipsets for laptops:NVIDIA tried to deny the problem ever existed.

Now, not only do they have to foot the bill to replace the defective chips, they also have to pay all of those lawyers.In addition, they have to try to re-gain the confidence of the end-users and the manufacturers who can choose an ATI/AMD chip as easily as an NVIDIA chip.Reply

this reminds me of the time when a company designing the controller chip for the flash disk drives for gambling machines got a batch from its foundry fab that had a variation in the process timing and had to fork over a year's worth of profits to cover the loss of business at the casinos. the chip designer had the profit margin of $1 per chip while the casino is a casino. i always wondered what if it had been intel that was the flash disk controller designer would the same result have happened... apparently yes. but then again, i really wonder if the end users of these flawed chipset pc's really did get their fair shake like the casino.

i am sure the arguments for and against will pretty much sum up the fairness debate in the industry food chain.Reply

Isn't Core2... a 2nd Generation? It was based of Core1 (AKA Centrino platform - which was better than the mainstream P4). Then we get this Nvidia inspored Core i3, i5, i7 which should donate class and socket type - but not.

Shouldn't Sandy Bridge be a 4th generation with its totally incompatible chipset to the previous i5/i7 etc?Reply

Gigabyte/Asus shouldnt be praised for anything. They are obligated to fix broken boards for the warranty period of 3 years, for any reason. Anyway Intel are footing the bill for the recall and is paying a fee to the manufacturers. WHat other option could they possibly have?Reply

Quite true but I would suggest the folks not to wait so long. Get a replacement in this year itself. Who knows how things change next year?Other options? As of now, still you couple buy non 67 series stuff like there are many mini-ATX mobos available from Q series I think (if my mem is right). Reply

I wonder why the board manf simply don't disable or remove the affected SATA ports on the unsold (and returned?) boards and resell them with a different sku at a serious discount? It seems better then just chucking them into the smasher. Intel shouldn't mind as it will allow them to move some of those sniney new, orphaned processors.Reply

I am one of the unfortunate who bought the defective intel sandybridge board in New Delhi early this year. It gave problems from the onset. before returning the board I asked the service centre how long it would take - 1 wk was the answer. it is now 3 wks but Intel still has not replaced the board saying that it is not in stock. They refuse to either refund or give an equivalent. Customerservice in India from Intel is traumatic. they cut calls give false info - my emails are not answered - all I am told is that they have escalated replacement which could take who knows how many more months. Their service centre told me if I was not willing to wait I could go to the consumer court - despite their assurance that the matter would be resolved in 15 working days. I presume that individual customers have been used as testing equipment. I also presume that this is how they cut their losses - on the backs of individual customers in countries like India. INTEL SANDYBRIDGE is a CRYING SHAMEReply